Today sees the release of All Time Low‘s seventh album ‘Last Young Renegade’ – featuring ‘Ground Control’, a huge collaboration with pop genius twins Tegan & Sara. We caught up with Tegan Quin and ATL frontman Alex Gaskarth to discuss how they came to work with each other, their mutual love and respect, the state of music, and what the future might hold.

ALEX GASKARTH (ALL TIME LOW)

How did you meet Tegan and Sara and at what point did it first make sense that you guys work together?

“I don’t think we’d ever formally met and hung out if I’m being honest. Maybe in passing here and there, at festivals or something… This is one of those strange, perfect moments when we as a band immediately thought of them as a great fit for the song, simply as fans, and they reciprocated and were down to be involved. We reached out to them pretty much out of the blue.”

What is it about Tegan & Sara’s sound and ethos that made you want to work with them?

“I’ve been a fan of Tegan & Sara for years, always loved their music and respected their activism. When it came time to find a feature for ‘Ground Control’, (which was written as a duet,) they just seemed like the perfect fit with the aesthetic of the record. I think it’s also a collaboration that the fans maybe didn’t see coming; it’s always fun to keep people on their toes with new music.”

What kind of spirit and energy do you think they brought to the track?

“It just sounds so right with them on the track. We had a good feeling about it going in, but when I heard the first mix with them singing, the song took on a new life and really found it’s stride.”

TEGAN QUIN (TEGAN & SARA)

How did you meet All Time Low and at what point did it first make sense that you guys work together?

“If you can believe it, we have never met! We did everything remotely. So we went into a studio here in LA without them and recorded our parts alone. Which sometimes is nice. We’ve done that before. I get really nervous in the studio so sometimes it’s nice to be alone so you don’t feel as much pressure. Sara and I are big fans of All Time Low, so it was probably for the best that they weren’t there or we may have performed less confidently. LOL!

“When they sent the song to us we both loved it. It was instantly in my head and I liked the melodies a lot. We generally want to hear music before we agree to do collaborations like these. You never know. Even if you love a band the track might not vibe right. Or the song might not hit a nerve. For me I want to emotionally connect with any song I might perform on. So in this case we just wanted to hear the song. We loved it. So we were in!”

What is it about All Time Low’s sound and ethos that made you want to work with them?

“They seem very connected to their audience, which is always something I appreciate about bands. They are hard working and have put out records (not just songs). They feel sincere in their passion to create and connect. Which is basically how we describe our own band. So I feel a sense of connection with them as I think we are attempting the same thing with our art. They also don’t appear to take themselves too seriously which I also appreciate. I like the evolution of their sound from record to record. I believe they have made seven records (we have made eight) and if you go back listen to early tracks and compare the to what they are doing now the essence is there, but the sound has evolved. I think they’ve taken risks and challenged themselves to keep making original records and I really appreciate that about them.”

What kind of spirit and energy do you think you bring to the track?

“We always lead with “don’t fuck it up”. Then after that I’d say we wanted to match Alex’s vocal energy. It’s a huge sounding track but his vocal is both huge and intimate at different times in the song. So I think we mainly just tried to match the energy of each moment he was creating vocally.”

Who else would you love to collaborate with?

“We love experimenting outside our genre. So, we’d be up for some collaborations outside pop. I never say specific names for fear of it never working out. HA.”

‘Love You To Death’ was one of the best albums of 2016. Have you had any thoughts about what direction you’d like to head in on new material?

“We are starting to talk a bit about it. We want to take all of next year to write and travel and relax. I think we need to write a lot, live a lot to decide what comes next. The songs always dictate the direction of the record so we just have to see what comes out of us. The songs will lead the way.”

For the video for That Girl, our 10th and final video from LY2D, we brought director Allister Ann out with us on the road in Canada and the US to capture a behind the scenes look at our life on tour.

This year has been incredible. We have nothing but love and gratitude for our amazing fans. Our time on the road this year reminded us again just how lucky we are to do what we do, and how proud we are of the community of fans that are drawn to what we create.

We hope you have enjoyed all 10 videos as much as we have! I will be doing a Facebook Live chat at 10am PST today, so come ask me all the questions you’ve been wanting to ask all year!

“A few months ago I was watching a TV show about the 80’s, and a scene from Miami Vice with Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas came on. They were talking specifically about the episode in which they used the entire Phil Collins song “In The Air Tonight,” almost as if it were a music video. I remember thinking how cool it would be to have Sara and I remake the famous scene. Sadly, neither of us can drive, nor did we have the time or funds to reshoot that famous scene in Miami. Instead we tapped director Nathan Boey in Vancouver to reshoot it using puppets! I think it might even be better with us as puppets than if we had been in it ourselves.” – TRQ

“It is always special to create visuals for songs and bands I enjoy, which was the case here. With Tegan and Sara’s busy tour schedule, I thought something with puppets could be a fun solution. They shared with me their childhood passion for Miami Vice and the rest sort of wrote itself! Eleni Creative‘s dolls were beautifully custom-built, and the idea of them ripping around the city in a mini Lamborghini had me giggling throughout production. I loved trying to stay true to a dramatic, stylized, retro tone while being completely immersed in the absurd world of puppets.” – Director Nathan Boey

In this video we wanted to marry the high-energy and colorful vibe of Stop Desire’s production with the longing sexual undertones of the song’s lyrics.

Director Allister Ann created a colorful treatment that included highly descriptive vignettes that really piqued our interest. The idea of having Sara and me live out a day in this strange and colorful world – where we remain straight-faced while encountering highly suggestive characters doing every day things – really made us laugh.

While writing Stop Desire I was attempting to explore the tension between Desire (want) and Love (have). Can we truly love someone and still desire them? And why so often do we want (desire) someone else, when we have (love) someone already? Esther Perel has a book called Mating In Captivity that I read recently. I read it years after I wrote Stop Desire, but she beautifully outlines this exact concept.

I loved the idea that the video for Stop Desire would entertain on a very basic level, just like the song itself. And then if people are interested in digging to explore the deeper levels of desire and love, this video also encapsulates the complex daily temptations of our existence.

It was a stormy day in the forest in Queens, NY, but we are so happy and moved by the final result of our White Knuckles video shoot with director Minister Akins. Huge thanks to our talented dancers Kaner Flex and Mela Murder for really capturing the emotion of the song!

Anyone who has experienced anxiety knows how isolating and helpless it feels. Tegan and Sara’s latest video, for their single “Hang on to the Night,” navigates anxiety and the crippling thoughts that come along with it.

“The song was a response to a number of sudden deaths in our family and my anxiety about mortality,” Sara Quin tells us of the synth-pop ballad. The video explores the “regenerative” aspect of the night, both literally and figuratively. “If you can manage to hang on, you can face another day.”

The animated video is directed and illustrated by Lisa Hanawalt, who’s responsible for the look of Netflix’s animated hit BoJack Horseman. Though the collaboration seems unlikely, Hanawalt admits, “I’m an anxious person, which definitely informs my personal work.” When Sara messaged the artist on Twitter, Hanawalt knew the song would be a perfect fit.

Tegan and Sara trusted Hanawalt with full creative direction throughout the process. “When [Lisa] sent me her drawings, I already felt very realized, as if she saw me,” Sara says. Inspired both by moments from Fantasia and traditional folklore, Hanawalt tells the story of a larger-than-life horse who acts as the guardian of the night sky. The video shows the horse waking up the nocturnal creatures, including two cats who are star-crossed lovers, sacrificing themselves to the night. Hanawalt describes the effect as “sad but hopeful because you know the cycle will repeat itself the next night.”

Sara has always felt a connection to nighttime. When she was a child, the dark was a negative place in which the singer would cry herself to sleep over her anxious thoughts. In adulthood, however, Sara seeks comfort from the night. “I feel anonymous and protected at night,” she says. “It’s a time to absorb and reflect on the day, sorting feelings and experiences.”

Hanawalt’s signature colors convey the depth of emotional release found at night. “Saturated colors and gradients pair so well with music,” she says. Especially in “Hang on to the Night,” the illustrator finds that a “bright, swelling purple can be as powerful as any words.”

Working on the video was a cathartic experience for both the duo and Hanawalt. ”It feels good to sing something sad,” Sara says. “The words take on a weight that buoys the music, but the melodies and textures of the song feel hopeful.” For her part, Hanawalt found the process “humbling and comforting.”

The video also encapsulates the song’s quiet optimism. Sara feels the song ultimately captures the positive effects of grappling with anxiety: “Humans are incredibly resilient, and the refrain reminds me of what we are capable of and what we can recover from.”

Our next video is… Faint of Heart! This is a very important one for us, and it features some incredible LGBTQ artists that we felt so honored to work with. Director Devon Kirkpatrick put together an amazing group of performers to bring this video to life.

We bonded with Devon about the lack of women in film, the need for more diversity in our industry and the intense desire we had to showcase the LGBTQ community in our work. We are thrilled to be releasing a video that highlights the incredible beauty, strength, creativity and diversity of our LGBTQ community.

We hope this video reaches LGBTQ people and makes them feel realized. We hope a wider audience is able to see the incredible talent and beauty of the LGBTQ community and we hope it reminds people to follow their hearts, to not be consumed with what others might think of them or their love and that it inspires them to make choices that make them happy regardless of their gender or sexuality.

Tegan and Sara‘s new video for “Faint of Heart” is colorful and queer as hell. You’ll spot some familiar faces, for sure.

Tegan tells Teen Vogue:

“From the second we walked in, I felt incredibly emotional. The cast was so young, so excited, so talented, so friendly and so diverse. It was clear this video was going to be very special. I felt honored to be included… which sounds silly since it was a music video for our band. But from the second we arrived, my brain recognized the music video as something we were doing together with our community to present the bravery, the talent, the love, the art, and the connection we all have, rather than just a vehicle for our music — which was a relief. It might be hyperbolic to say this, but I think it altered how we looked at how we were going to proceed in our career. The video had meaning, and that felt very important in that moment of time.”

After my parents’ divorce my Mom and Dad remained friends. I saw their future relationships stretch into decades, but no wedding bells rang. Common law seemed as binding as matrimony, and I grew to see their choices as rebellious and inspiring. As a teenager and then young adult – newly out as queer – I didn’t mourn the fact that I wouldn’t legally be able to marry my girlfriend. It was only in my mid-twenties that I realized the privilege of my choice and the unfairness and sometimes cruel reality of our discriminatory world. Sure, I didn’t care about weddings, but there were plenty of generations behind and before me that did. The activist in me fought passionately for marriage equality because of what it signified socially, and for the countless legal benefits and protections that had been withheld from so many devoted same sex couples in history. I was happy when the Supreme Court ruling legalized same sex marriage in the USA, but I was also relieved that I could finally “come out” as a person who actively dislikes the institution. Specifically the assumption that by not participating in the ritual you are a deviant or unlikely to share the same common values as someone who does. Not unlike new parents telling you they understand the world in a way that you – the childless – never could, I sometimes resent the notion that being married “changes EVERYTHING.” Of late I’ve resigned myself to accepting that even if marriage does “change EVERYTHING,” I’m happy to keep things just the way they are. Keep your name, keep your faith, it’s what made me love you in the first place.